I exercised some exceptionally poor judgment yesterday when dealing with our smoke detector, which is probably Hudson the wonder dog's least favorite object in the world, thanks to the occasional high-pitched chirps it emits like it recently did when the batteries died. I realized I had failed to put new batteries in when that happened (speaking of poor judgment) and decided with Hudson downstairs I could rectify this with only the one chirp the detector would emit when powered up. Well that one short chirp caused my poor pooch to run upstairs, squat and evacuate her entire bladder at my feet, and then run up into my office where she cowered in the bathroom for an hour. Note to self: Next time it would be a better to do this when she is out in the yard. From her standpoint, it would probably be better still to just discard the smoke detector and take our chances.

Yep, those are now required "health and safety" building code. I recently finished my basement myself and decided to pull permits for the project. They required smoke detectors on every floor, in every bedroom, and outside the bedrooms, even though I was only pulling permits for my basement.

Needless to say, trying to get a wire from the basement through the first floor, through the second floor, and into the attic of an old house was one of the most frustrating adventures of my life. But now that it is done, I do feel a good bit safer than just having one smoke detector quite far from the bedrooms. Also, for just a few extra bucks you can get combo carbon monoxide/fire detectors.

One night, while I was gone, my smoke detector's battery ran out. My parrot at the time was listening to the beep. Even after I changed the battery, I heard, beep, beep, beep, constantly for a week from the parrot.